Calliope was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, and playing with the balusters under the curved handrail. She was wearing a clean white shirt, which she had tucked into her trousers, and the high-heeled lacy suede boots with the buttons, which she had tucked her trousers into. She had pinned back her shoulder-length black hair, and had a dot of rouge high on each cheek. She was holding the trench coat which also served her as wall art.
Ann was wearing her red satin dress, offset by Calliope’s red glitter flower, and red satin heels with a beaded design on the toe. Her hair was twisted into a complicated updo with the cut-glass tiara Hyacinth and Mordecai had given her for Yule as a centrepiece. Her makeup was dramatic and flawless. It was quite some contrast.
Ann made a pained smile. Oh, my gods, she tried to dress up and be pretty like I am. For our birthday, and to meet all our friends at the club…
Milo broke into her thoughts: She’s wearing the shoes, Ann!
…Yes, I’m sure that’s very nice for you. I’m just a bit worried they’re going to think she’s auditioning as a drag king. And, you know, if Pierre’s there, he will start giving her pointers, because she’s not very…
You like pretty shoes, too, Ann!
She huffed a weak sigh, then reinforced her smile trying to conceal it. I like shoes, Milo, but you like shoes. Can we put the shoes aside now? I’m worried Pierre might get the wrong idea and hurt her feelings, but I know she thinks she looks nice and I might hurt her feelings if I try to fix her.
Don’t you dare touch one hair on Calliope’s head and if Pierre says something stupid, we’ll punch him.
No, Milo, that’s not really an option. But he might not be there, I know he has work… other work. I’ll just check when we get in and grab him. I don’t think she really looks like a performer, but you know he has that sense of humour. The others will understand…
Calliope snickered. “Is Milo yelling about the shoes?”
I would be if you gave me a minute! To hell with Pierre!
Ann’s smile became more genuine. “Yes, dear, a bit. I like them, too, just not the same way. You look so…”
“Is that how come you hung my collage with the shoe in the closet?” Calliope said.
“Ah… Oh. You noticed that.” Ann’s smile faded out like a distant radio signal before flickering and returning. “It’s just convenient for him. He’s not hiding it — we both like it very much! He just… has closet-specific activities. That’s like our spare room! It’s sort of a… a den.”
“Like a rabbit hole?” Calliope said.
“Yes!” Ann said happily. “It’s safe. Milo likes being safe.”
The shoes and dresses live there and they are my friends.
Sweetheart, I love you and I understand how you feel, but that’s weird. I’m not going to say that for you because it’s weird, okay?
Okay.
“Shoes are important to us,” Ann said. “It’s almost like they’re a part of us. A part of me, because I wear them and they’re mine, but… we both like them and we share them. The first time I ever went shopping, it was for pretty shoes.”
“‘Pretty’ means you wanted them,” Calliope said.
“Yes.” Ann laughed. “And an awful lot, because I was scared people would notice I was a boy in a dress and hurt me — or tell me I couldn’t have the shoes, which would’ve been just as bad.”
“Couldn’t Milo buy them for you?”
“He could have,” Ann said. “It’s harder for him, but he could have. He bought me lots of things.” She shook her head. “But I’m embarrassed about that and I don’t like to talk about it. It was… I think both of us knew it was time for me to buy things for myself. Like a Real Person.”
Calliope frowned, “You don’t have to talk about it, Ann.”
Ann smiled and put an arm around her shoulders. “Thank you, darling. I know. But I can’t seem to get away from thinking about it. It is our birthday, and buying the shoes was like a birthday. I think I’d like to tell you about it, but let’s check Cin and Em and make sure Lucy is sorted first…”
Mordecai peeked out of the kitchen and said, “She’s fine! Go have fun with people your own age and don’t give Hyacinth an opening!”
“I wasn’t serious!” said Hyacinth’s somewhat fainter voice. “I hate parties. I’m going to stay here and eat the rest of this cake…”
(Ann and Milo thought it was more that Cerise might be there than that Hyacinth didn’t like parties as such, but Ann wasn’t going to bring it up.)
“I didn’t make that for you!” Mordecai snapped.
“And yet, the butter knife continues to cut me another slice, even as we speak…”
Mordecai vanished. There was a clattering from the kitchen, the sound of dropped cutlery.
“It’s all right, Em!” Ann said quickly. “Please don’t fight! It was very good, but I’m sure they’ll have another at the club and send me home with more! It’s too much sugar! Cin is taking a bullet for me!”
Ann, “too much sugar” isn’t real.
You said that about dinosaurs, Milo.
Show me one fossil of “too much sugar!”
“Get your fingers out of that cake, you savage!” said Mordecai’s distant voice. “I will scrape off every inch of frosting and redo the whole thing just to spite you — no! Don’t lick it!”
Calliope was wandering towards the kitchen, perhaps to sketch the altercation. Ann put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her. “No, dear. I think we’d better just go. They’re… They’re busy. It’s fine.” She smiled.
◈◈◈
“…I think they really do love each other, they just don’t like to say it,” Ann said, as they walked past the nail salon on the way to the bus stop.
The Chozinese woman who ran the place scowled at them from the window. None of the ladies from 217 Violena ever wanted their nails done and they were right there. She was convinced it was intentional and they were getting them done somewhere cheaper. It couldn’t be somewhere nicer, they couldn’t afford that. Someplace cheaper, with slave labour.
Imperialists! she cried, silenced by the glass.
Calliope shrugged. “I got brothers and sisters, Ann. You don’t have to explain to me. Licking a cake to annoy someone is a kind of love. That lady with red nails is mad at us.”
“It’s only because she handed me a coupon once and I still haven’t used it,” Ann said. “I can’t explain it to her, but you must understand that I really can’t do my nails. People see Milo’s hands at the factory. You know, I ended up buying that pair of shoes because someone threw a cobblestone through the shop window of a nice lady who looked very much like her, but that was only because our government got lazy and stole ‘The Frog Song’ from Paul McCartney and Rupert the Bear…”
◈◈◈
That’s music!
They followed it through the crumbling streets like a cartoon character drifting after the aroma of pie.
The siege was over. They had two suitcases, a big one and a little one, which they either carried with them or hid. The big one had two dresses, a pair of shoes that didn’t quite fit, a flowered bonnet, a kerchief, a corset, a makeup kit, fashion magazines — and a pair of thick wool socks that Milo sometimes stole for their original purpose on cold nights. The little one had a pair of black trousers, a white shirt, a cheap pad of notepaper with a spiral binding, some pencils, a recent newspaper, and a shaving kit with a safety razor.
They no longer had Hennessy’s to play in. Some people had come and chased them out of it. Ann grabbed the suitcase, but they lost the crystal radio, the hand mirror, their original fashion magazines, and most of their food — all things which had not been in their suitcase at the time. In this way, they learned that San Rosille had grown tired of the siege and had decided to do something else. Just what, Ann and Milo didn’t know, but it seemed to involve less shelling. That was nice!
Selling dead people’s clothes was a lot less viable as a career now that there were fewer dead people in the gutters. But the newspapers had something called a “Help Wanted” section, and there were jobs in there.
Milo chose odd jobs and day labour from this limited menu, eschewing anything that required experience or social interaction. A lot of people still didn’t want him when they found out he couldn’t talk or look them in the eye, but he was quite used to sleeping in alleys and going hungry, so altogether their new circumstances were an improvement.
They were two.
They both loved music, and there hadn’t been any since they lost their crystal radio.
The music was coming from a storefront with a plate glass window. In rather perfunctory white paint, it advertised BOOKS — MUSIC — NOVELTIES, with sloppy cursive underneath that said Under construction! Pardon our dust! The display inside had stuffed animals and a record player.
Milo ducked behind a planter to listen and observe. Sometimes people still got an idea he was hanging around to steal things — possibly because he was so self-conscious about not looking like he was going to steal things.
“WE ALL… STAND… TOGETHER!” the record player declared in operatic tones. The little mechanical arm popped up and the music stopped. Milo frowned and stood, but it was only resetting. The song started again from the top. The chorus of voices were happy to be singing side-by-side and hand-in-hand, and they were going to stay that way no matter what!
This song is about me and my feelings, Milo thought, wide-eyed.
Ann liked it, too, but she thought he was just being silly. Milo, it’s about way more people! You can hear all of them!
We both stand together then, Milo thought. You can sing it that way about just us, Ann.
I don’t know if I can sing… She had never spoken in front of people and she hardly raised her voice above a whisper with Milo in the mirror. They didn’t have the castle anymore. There were people everywhere. People might think she was crazy if they heard. They both knew that. They had to be careful.
I know you can, Milo thought. When you want to. He curled his fingertips around the edge of the planter box and swayed to the melody. By the third playthrough, he had progressed to dancing a subtle box step with his arms spread as if to lift a skirt and hold his partner’s hand.
At repetition number four, a man wearing a slouch hat and a patched jacket pegged a huge black cobblestone through the window, knocking out the record player and covering the friendly soft bears and froggies in shards of glass. “SHUT UP THAT POLITICAL CRAP! WE LOST!”
A woman with a neat flowered dress, white apron, and practical dark hairstyle appeared in the doorway. “FREE MARSELLIA!” she said. She had kind of a funny accent, it sounded like the bouncy-ball noises they did in radio shows. She held up her hand with the V-sign, for victory, and then she flipped it around the rude way and repeated, “FREE MARSELLIA!”
A few voices halfheartedly answered, “Free Marsellia!” and there was one, “Shut up, lady!” followed by scattered applause.
“FUCK Marsellia!” said the man in the slouch hat. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked off amid more applause.
“I call police!” said the woman in the doorway, gesturing. “I call police!”
Poor lady, Milo thought. Police weren’t real. They were like Santa Claus.
Maybe they had them back where she came from.
Ann, if there was a place with police and Santa Claus, why would you leave there and come here?
…Tax purposes?
Those were words with no meaning, just something they’d heard people say.
The woman with the music store had produced a straw broom with a bright red handle and was sweeping up the glass. The sidewalk was falling apart. She was loosening the gravel in the cracks and making it worse.
Milo tucked one suitcase under his arm and put his hand in his pocket. There were two sols in there, just enough for a small meal and a bed. He removed them with a sigh. Well, if she won’t take them from me, I’ll throw them at her and she can pick them up when the creepy guy goes away.
He approached cautiously, looking down and away. When he saw cheap red canvas shoes with a rubber sole amidst the rubble and glass, he held out his hand with the two coins, palm up like he was feeding a stray dog. Here. Here, lady. Nice lady. Don’t bite.
“You buy?” said the lady’s bouncy-ball voice.
He shook his head. He did not wish to negotiate the purchase of a smashed record player or a glass-shard-encrusted frog. He was paying for the music. He nudged his hand toward her. He’d drop the coins and walk off if she didn’t take them.
He felt her pick them up with thumb and forefinger, like a bird pecking. One. Two. He closed his hand, took the small suitcase from under his arm and walked away.
“Wait!” said the lady.
Milo stopped, winced, and shut his eyes. He did not want a frog. It would get glass in his clothes. He would take it with him and throw it away later just to have this over with…
A book with a red cover entered his field of vision. There was a pink sticker in the corner with a cross scratched on it. The hand holding it had sculpted nails with the cuticles pushed down like the fashion magazines said you were supposed to. The cover had a picture of cartoon frogs and a white bear, like the stuffed animals in the window. Rupert and the Frog Song.
He put down the suitcases and took the book. There was a story with pictures, and in the back, in a paper sleeve, a record and the lyrics and music for the song!
Milo, how is a song about a bunch of happy frogs worth a rock through your window?
I don’t know, Ann. Maybe “political” doesn’t mean what I think it does.
They didn’t find out it really was political until almost four years later, when they gave the book to Erik, and Mordecai didn’t like playing the song. The Third Coalition of Nations had stolen it and switched up the words a bit, in various languages, because they thought it was a song about them and their feelings. Maybe it was, but Mordecai didn’t like it and neither did that man in the slouch hat.
She wondered if Em and Erik even noticed they’d rewritten the words in the back with a pencil.
Erik might’ve still had the book, Ann and Milo didn’t like to ask, but they would’ve understood if he lost it somewhere on purpose. It had sentimental value, but it was a present and they didn’t really need it anymore. Erik had just been little, but he figured out Mordecai hated the song too. They knew he liked to fix things, they couldn’t be mad at him for that.
Milo closed the book and tucked it under his arm. He nodded and picked up his suitcases.
“Thank-you-come-again-please!” the lady said brightly.
Ann wasn’t mad at him for spending their doss money, but he was a little embarrassed. He wandered down the street, checking the alleys for a good place to sleep. When he saw a window with pretty shoes in it, he didn’t even slow down.
Milo, go back! It says “shoe store!” It’s a shoe store! It’s a store with nothing but shoes! Go back!
I spent our money…
It doesn’t cost to look!
Milo went back and looked at the shoes. They were all resting in pairs on upturned crates and cardboard boxes. He put down the suitcases and put a hand on the warm glass, then both hands, then his forehead.
Oh, so cute! So tiny!
As if they were watching puppies tussle around on a blanket, all the while knowing their housing didn’t allow pets. It was heartbreaking. One pair, cruelly, was labelled with a 10. But the really spectacular ones, the pink satin ankle-high boots with bows and a row of pearl buttons up the side, were labelled: 25sc — SALE!
Sale. The word was like an incantation, it conjured the ringing of cash register bells. These are a bargain. Buy them now or someone else will.
That bitch, Milo thought, already picturing a rich lady with red nails and tiny feet.
I want to try them on! Milo, get changed!
They’re too little…
It says “all sizes!” IT SAYS “ALL SIZES!”
He wobbled and put a hand to his head. He wasn’t sure whether she wanted to wear them or strangle them to death. Ann, I think if I let you try on those shoes you’re going to try to walk out of the store with them and I can’t let you do that, no matter how pretty they are. They’ll see you. They’ll hurt you. There’s no police.
BUT THEY’RE ON SALE!
In the glass, her eyes were brimming over tears, with the spectacular shoes behind her transparent face, the dream of a ghost.
He sighed. I’ll find a job. I need one anyway. But I might not find one in time to get those shoes, Ann.
Ann smiled in the glass. Milo, I think we know a very nice lady with a broken record player…
◈◈◈
Calliope put a hand on Ann’s shoulder. They were sitting together on the bus. It smelled like newsprint and dust inside. Outside, the setting sun was making the scratched windows opaque. “Wait, Milo fixed some other lady’s record player before mine?”
“Oh, not as nicely, dear,” Ann assured her, smiling. “It was a job, he only had the afternoon to do it. He had to draw it for her. It was still very hard for him to write at the time — anyway, she couldn’t read Anglais. But she knew what sols looked like. He drew her five!”
◈◈◈
He also helped her get the glass out of her frogs. He felt bad he couldn’t put the window back together for her, especially since she was giving back the money he gave her to help fix it, but it needed mergers and he wasn’t very good at those and he had to go make sure the shoes were still there. He gave her the record from his book with the frog song, to replace the one the man broke. He didn’t have a record player.
She said something as he was walking away, but it wasn’t a yes-or-no question, or “wait” or “give me back my money, I don’t like how you fixed my record player” so he kept going.
Later, much later, he wondered if he could’ve had a job selling BOOKS, MUSIC and NOVELTIES with the flowered-dress lady. He thought probably not. She wouldn’t have liked him not talking to her, and she would’ve found out about Ann and flipped out.
But Ann liked to picture them developing a cute little relationship over many months, like a montage in a silent film, and then the nice lady would’ve asked Milo to marry her, and they would’ve lived in an apartment above the store with lace curtains and two kids and a doggie.
Milo thought that was just being silly. He barely even looked at the lady’s face. She was probably old. Anyway, Calliope was a perfect human being and Hyacinth’s house was way better. (Ann did not call Calliope a “perfect human being,” she applied Milo’s “way better” to both her and Hyacinth’s house.) Lace curtains and paper doll children were only fun to think about when you didn’t know about real-life messy kids and curtains and relationships.
The shoes were still in the store window, they were still on sale, and there was still a little sign that said “all sizes.” He blew out a breath and raked back his hair with his fingers. It was just over chin length, not quite enough to pull into a ponytail or look like a girl. Bobbed hair hadn’t been “in” since “the revolution,” whatever that was. Ann covered it with the kerchief and the bonnet. He thought she looked really good as a woman, but she hid most of the time and she didn’t talk to people.
The problem was, Ann’s shoes in the suitcase were a size 9, because Milo was a size 9. But they weren’t the same. They were too little and they pinched. Ladies’ shoes had different sizes. They both thought Ann was probably a 10, because the 9s were only a little too small, but she really ought to try the shoes on and be sure.
Milo could not go into the store with a note or a drawing saying that he would like to buy some shoes for his girlfriend, and she was probably a size ten, but could he try them on, please, to make sure? Well, he could, but there was no way they’d let him have the shoes. If Ann wanted pretty pink satin boots with pearl buttons and pink ribbons that fit, she needed to go into the store and pass as a girl.
And then there was the matter of talking. Ann could go into the store with a note that said she couldn’t speak, and could she try on some size tens…
But Milo knew she didn’t want to do that. And he didn’t want her to do that either. And neither one of them wanted to say that, because then one or the other of them might say, Look, let’s be sensible. The shoes are more important than the talking. We have lots of time to do talking. Let’s do a note to be safe.
It was never a matter of ability. Ann could always talk. She could talk to anyone. She just hadn’t wanted to yet. Not for other people.
So, if she wanted to now… They couldn’t treat that like a big deal or a risk or anything, could they?
No.
Milo nodded gravely to her in the glass. Okay.
He sprung the lock on a pay toilet with magic and crammed himself in there with two suitcases, both of which had to go on the toilet seat. He put his on the top.
First he took everything off and folded it, including his glasses. Then he used the shaving kit, so none of his things in the suitcase would be wet. Pay toilets only got cold water but he was used to it. There were scratches and ugly words all over the mirror. He nodded to Ann again, but he didn’t like to talk to her in such an ugly mirror.
He put away his things, latched up the suitcase and put Ann’s on top. The corset was white with pink lacing in the back, already done up with a bow. He blew out a breath and did up the busk in the front.
Ann removed the wool socks and balled up each one carefully. She tucked them down the top of the corset and turned this way and that, checking to see if she’d gotten them even. “I need more socks, Milo,” she muttered. She was not at all testing her voice, she was just annoyed with the socks. “I look like I’m twelve. I’m a woman!” That was a little too loud and she winced and covered her mouth with a hand. Sort of, she thought. She smiled. Close enough for shoes!
There were two dresses. She thought the purple one was nicer and would go better with the shoes. Her new shoes. She didn’t have any stockings, petticoats or underwear. Her skirts were long enough. She pulled back her too-short hair with the kerchief, leaving out one red curl just to prove she wasn’t bald under there.
Then she opened the makeup kit and went to work like a classical painter, the kind who were always concerned with enormous, fleshy women eating fruit. Let’s paint a pretty girl with a feminine jawline, high cheekbones, and just a hint of colour. Make it look natural! Red lips and smoked eyes are for evening wear.
There was a tiny comb to help sculpt her eyebrows, and she plucked any stray hairs that refused to behave.
“There!” she said finally, satisfied. She examined her ragged nails, cleaned under them with the tip of the tweezers and washed her hands in the sink. She put away the makeup and took out the crushed felt bonnet, already trying to mould it back into shape. There were fake violets, tea roses and daisies affixed to the brim, but they were always falling off, littering the suitcase like potpourri. She brushed away a couple of the looser ones before tying on the whole configuration with an exuberant lavender bow.
She stepped into her too-small shoes. They always went on last. They hurt.
She frowned in the mirror, looking for any detail she might have missed, and then she smiled. Big smile! “I enjoy being a girl,” she said with grim determination, through her teeth. They’d heard that song on the radio. “They can interrogate me like the detective serials, Milo. I’ll never let on I’m not. And I deserve pretty shoes.”
Milo nodded to her. I know you do.
She picked up both suitcases and squeezed out of the door.
Smiling, never once acknowledging that she was a boy with no underwear in painful shoes, she walked into the shoe store and set her cases down near the door. She nodded to the man behind the glass counter, then she picked up the pretty pink shoes from the window and set them gently down on the counter in front of him. “Size ten, please,” she said, in a soft voice that might have been a bit hoarse, but not too low for a sixteen-year-old girl.
“I have them in the back,” said the man behind the counter, smiling. He was wearing a bottle-green shirt and a white apron. “Just a moment.”
They were in a big cardboard box with a squished lid and a piece of tissue paper. There was brown paper balled up inside of each shoe and he removed it for her, setting each piece in the box with the tissue. He set each boot on the counter. “Size ten,” he said. “Would you like to try them on?”
Ann nodded.
The man raised a brow and looked concerned at the poor girl’s lack of stockings, but a lot of girls were like that these days. It wasn’t even worth remarking upon. Stockings were an expensive commodity. All the silk had gone for sutures and uniforms.
She stood and walked once around the little bench, frowning down at her feet and seriously considering. Then she looked up and smiled.
He smiled back instantly, like a reflex.
Ann turned away to keep herself modest, and removed five sols from the top of her dress, where she had secreted them beside the socks — she didn’t have a purse! She placed them in the man’s hand and clasped both of her hands around it. “Thank you,” she said.
“Do you want to wear them out?”
She nodded.
“I’ll box up your other pair,” he said. He leaned down to collect them.
The girl lifted a pale hand with ragged nails, “No thank you,” she said imperiously. “Please donate them to needy people with small feet.”
She collected her suitcases and walked out of the store.
As soon as she was safe in the nearest alley, she dropped both suitcases, clasped her hands to her face and screamed, “They fit, Milo! They fit! They fit!”
I’m so proud of you, Ann. You… You have such wonderful taste in shoes!
“I do!” She picked up her skirt in one hand and danced a delicate circle on the uneven cobbles. “Pair of shoes!” she sang. “Hand-in-glove! We both stand together!” And she joyfully stamped her feet.
◈◈◈
Calliope snickered. “‘Needy people with small feet.’”
Ann smiled and offered her a hand down from the bus. The Black Orchid was just a short walk away. “Well, smaller than mine, dear.” Her smile faded. “You do understand I love being your sister but…” She lowered her voice, due to the people walking by on the street, “I’m not really a girl. You know that, don’t you, sweetheart? Is that okay?”
“I was pretty sure,” Calliope said. She frowned. “But Miss Cerise is really a girl, and that lady threw coffee on her for having a dress anyway. Is it like how they didn’t want to let me into the bank with pants?”
“It’s similar,” Ann said, “but I don’t know if it’s just the same. People can be very cruel.” She smiled again. “But it’s not like that at the Black Orchid. They’re accepting. They won’t mind you in pants at all, but I suppose I should warn you, Pierre may tease you a bit. He’s blue. He’s a…”
Calliope shrugged. “I’m kinda used to people teasing me, Ann, but I think it’s the opposite of accepting. They do it because I’m weird. They can’t tell when I’m being funny on purpose or just more weird, so I tease them back. I think Milo’s the only one outside of my family who ever noticed the difference.”
Ann stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and tugged on Calliope’s hand so she would stop too. “Dear… Milo wants me to ask you… I’m not sure how to say it so it makes sense so I’ll just say it… Do you ever feel like your car is stuck in reverse and you’re driving on the wrong side of the road and… and it’s the people in the other cars who yell at you for being wrong who are really wrong, because your car is just like that and they don’t get it?”
“Like life is a highway? Like the song?”
“Yes, but specifically about your car being wrong.”
“About me being wrong,” Calliope said.
Ann shook her head. She put both hands on Calliope’s shoulders. “We’re not saying you’re wrong and we’ll never say that. Just… do you feel wrong relative to other people?”
“Oh, yeah, totally,” Calliope said, nodding.
Yes! I knew it! We were made for each other! Let’s teach Lucy to drive backwards too and make our own species!
“Milo feels that way too,” Ann said diplomatically. “He’s glad you understand, but I know how hard it is… He knows how hard it is, too, but he’s distracted by being glad right now.” She nodded once firmly. “Dear, if Pierre teases you, I am going to punch him, okay?”
Calliope beamed. “Yeah. Okay.”
Ann hugged her. “I should tell you Milo feels like the dresses and shoes in the closet are his friends, and he would like to invite you to sit with him in there or under the worktable in the basement if you think you might like that. And I wanted to say you look lovely. I didn’t get a chance to before. Now, let’s go have fun being weird, sis.”
